When I begin hearing the same thing from different people at the same time I stop and take notice. That is what happened last week. One day, my colleague on the consulting side of our business was lamenting a client’s poor management of the onboarding process for a candidate I just placed. The next day the issue became, even more, personal as a close friend opened up about her experience. She was disappointed with the way she was onboarded by her current employer. She had just completed her one-year anniversary as a Key Account Executive with a Fortune 500 financial services company. She thought she could have been much more productive leveraging her six-figure salary if her boss had crafted a better onboarding program. The message to her was: "you are smart and experienced so you can figure it out." Of course, she did figure it out, but at what cost?
To some extent, I can understand the first situation as the client is an emerging brand with a lot of moving parts. On the other hand, my colleague had delivered the on-boarding plan to the hiring manager. All he had to do was to share same with the new employee and facilitate his training and assimilation. The second situation is more confusing as the employer is a major, well-established brand.
When I think back on my job changes, while an employee in the Fortune 500 environment, I enjoyed the benefits of well-crafted onboarding programs. These were significant Senior General Manager positions. Not C-level jobs, but meaningful, highly compensated jobs. My employers invested the time to ensure that I had the tools, understood the culture, and assimilated well into my new job. They knew that if the onboarding program were sound, I would be more efficient sooner enhancing my potential to the company.
I understand that the world that changed. People are expected to do more with less. Some things have not changed, however. Turnover is still very costly. Typically, most turnover comes from the ranks of the least-tenured employees. In other words, there is a majority of permanent employees who have been with the company for a long time. The smaller group of less tenured employees represents the segment that is turning most often. Why is that? It is costly! Companies do not hire from the outside if they have the talent available inside the enterprise. So churning the most recent hires represents a failure to meet recruiting goals. In these situations, something is amiss in the recruiting-selection-management process.
For our purposes, onboarding is about housekeeping, incorporation, and acceleration. Housekeeping refers to the administrative activities of making a new hire an employee. That includes completing the new-hire package to put the individual into the payroll system and assigning their workspace. It also includes providing the new hire with tools of the trade such as cell phones, computers, and access to the intranet. Incorporation speaks to the introduction of the new employee to the company. That includes getting to know their existing team, peers, and possibly the next level of management where they may interface. Acceleration is about helping the new hire become fully productive as soon as possible. Acceleration is learning how things get done in the company. It is as much about cultural indoctrination as it is about understanding business processes. Acceleration may be the most critical part of the onboarding process as it is highly interpersonal and likely the most politically charged part of the work environment.
If you are about to start a new job, invest some time learning about your onboarding plan. If you find it lacking, you must be proactive! Take the initiative to enhance the onboarding program and gain buy-in from your hiring manager and key stakeholders. Success in your new job depends on getting off to a good start! For the next few posts, we will explore the onboarding process more thoroughly.
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Jim Weber, President
New Century Dynamics Executive Search
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